Fantasy Celebrity Game

ABSTRACT

An online game in which the participants, called “owners”, each assemble a team of real life celebrities from mainstream movie, music, television, fashion, and sports. The owners score points based on personal and professional events in the lives of the celebrities on their team.

FIELD AND BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to the field of online games similar in style to Fantasy Football.

People are often interested in the personal and professional lives of celebrities in movie, music, television, fashion, and sporting roles. They keep track of who has personal and professional success and failure.

As will be clear from the following, one object of the present invention is to use the mechanism of an online game to allow people to compete against each other to form the best celebrity team.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Fantasy Celebrity is an online game in which the participants, called “owners”, each assemble a team of real life celebrities from mainstream movie, music, television, fashion, and sports. The owners score points based on personal and professional events in the lives of the celebrities on their teams.

Leagues can be arranged in which the winner is the owner whose team scored the most total points at the end of a game period.

Alternatively, the teams can play each other in a head-to-head format, in which each owner's team plays against a single opponent at a time. At the end of a game period, the winner is the owner whose team has the best win-loss record.

An alternate league where the winner is the owner whose team scored the most negative points at the end of a game period.

A central website would keep track of all owners, the celebrities on their teams, the score of each celebrity, and handle all aspects relative to the game. Each owner would have an account on the website, and the webmaster would enforce the rules of the game.

The scoring aspects of each celebrity would be based in part on (but not limited to):

-   Movie success or failure -   Music album success or failure -   Television show success or cancellation -   Marriage, divorce -   Inclusion on best and worst dressed lists -   New boy/girlfriend or breakup of relationship -   Legal decisions for or against the celebrity (arrest, convictions,     jail time, sentence) -   Awards won (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Golden Globe, etc.) -   Pregnancy, birth of a child -   Significant behavior deemed appropriate by webmaster     The number of points awarded for each event in a celebrity's life     would be determined by the webmaster or website administrators.

Alternatively, the number of points to be awarded for a specific event could be determined by a vote or poll of the team owners. A weighted average would be calculated to ensure the points awarded would not be skewed by a few players.

The celebrities would be drafted by each owner at the start of each game period. The length of a game period will be variable and determined by the webmaster and players.

At the start of each game period, the webmaster has the option of allowing owners to keep a certain number of celebrities on each team, or starting each owner with a blank roster. To fill a roster, the owners would need to draft or auction free agent or rookie celebrities onto their teams. Owners may also trade celebrities among teams based on agreements among the owners.

Unwanted celebrities in the draft are placed on waivers and become free agents. These celebrities can be taken by any owner's team.

The game would be played online via the world wide web (www). The player, celebrity, league, and team information would all be stored in a database. This database would be interfaced with a webpage front end where players would interact. The front-end would use (but is not limited to) a combination of Java applets, Javascript, and PHP programs to control game-play and user interaction. PHP scripts would run at specified times to determine league winners and notify players of imminent drafts. This would preclude the need for a player to download any special software to play the game. All user interaction would be conducted via their web browser.

Players would create an account with the website, and then join leagues with other players. Each player would then draft the celebrities they wanted onto their team. Players would rely on the website programming to manage all technical aspects of the draft, team management, and player ranking. At the end of the game, the website scripts would determine the league's winner. 

1. A method of playing a celebrity activity based game via the internet for a plurality of players, comprising the steps of providing a website where each player can construct a team of real-life celebrities; providing a webmaster, who would control all aspects of the game, enforce game rules, and determine game period length, celebrity team size, and scoring; providing a scoring of the positive and negative aspects of each celebrity's life as determined by the webmaster or a player vote; providing a game period, where celebrities would be drafted onto player's teams at the start. At the end of the game period, the winner would be proclaimed according to game rules.
 2. A method according to claim 1, where each team will be comprised of a fixed number of celebrities to be determined by the webmaster.
 3. A method according to claims 1-2, providing web based software to draft celebrities onto a player's team. Unwanted celebrities in the draft are placed on waivers and become free agents. These celebrities can be taken by any owner's team. At the start of each game period, the webmaster has the option of allowing owners to keep a certain number of celebrities on each team, or starting each owner with a blank roster. To fill a roster, the owners would need to draft or auction free agent or rookie celebrities onto their teams. Owners may also trade celebrities among teams based on agreements among the owners.
 4. A method according to claim 1-3, whereby teams can play each other in a head-to-head format. The winner is decided by win-loss record.
 5. A method according to claim 1-3, whereby teams are arranged in leagues and the winner is the team scoring the most points.
 6. A method according to claims 4 and 5, whereby the winner is the team scoring the most negative points.
 7. A method of scoring according to claims 1-6 based on events in the real life of each celebrity. The scoring will be determined by the webmaster based on the importance of the event in both the personal and professional life of the celebrity. More significant events will earn more points.
 8. A method of scoring according to claims 1-6 based on events in the real life of each celebrity. The scoring will be determined by polling the website users and taking a weighted average result.
 9. A method according to claim 1-8, providing web based software written in (but not limited to) Java, Javascript, and PHP to track the player's team and the associated rankings. This software would make use of relational databases to keep track of all game play activities and statistics. 